Hopes for Democracy in Iraq may be dashed

[irishgrl]

Sunnis bomb Shiites in an effort to scare them away from voting

HILLAH, Iraq - Sunni insurgents hit two Shiite towns in two days with brutal bombings that killed more than 110 people, apparently aiming to scare Shiites away from a crucial vote on Iraq's new constitution. In the latest attack, a car bomb ripped through a fruit and vegetable market crowded with Friday morning shoppers.

Destroyed stalls lay in pools of blood in the al-Sharia market in the southern city of Hillah, in Iraq's Shiite heartland. The scenes mirrored the devastation in Balad, the Shiite town in the middle of a Sunni region north of Baghdad hit by a triple suicide bombing Thursday, a far more lethal attack.

Unidentified bodies in bags or under pieces of cardboard lay on the ground in a Balad hospital courtyard Friday. Weeping women went from body to body searching for loved ones. The blasts reduced nearly an entire block in the market district to a giant mound of twisted metal and bricks strewn with bananas, tomatoes and other produce.

"Why does such a thing happen to us? We ask the government and Arab countries to help us," cried Mohammed Mahdi Jassim, a Balad resident.

Both attacks seemed staged to kill or maim as many civilians as possible, tearing through busy markets and commercial streets. At least 10 people were killed in Hillah and 102 in Balad. At least 22 of those killed both days were women and children.

Insurgents have vowed to derail the Oct. 15 referendum, opposed by Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, and the recent surge of violence has killed at least 200 people — including 13 U.S. service members — in the past five days.

The Sunni-led al-Qaida in Iraq, the most feared insurgent group, has declared "all-out war" on Shiites, and since a Shiite-majority government took power April 28, suicide bombers have killed at least 1,345 people, according to an Associated Press count.

Intimidating Shiites from voting in the referendum could boost Sunni attempts to reject the charter, and the tactic was having an effect among some in Balad and surrounding Shiite towns.

Mohammed Kadhim, 25, a Shiite shopkeeper in the town of Dujail, said he would not allow his family to vote. "I'm responsible for their safety after what happened in Balad, and what is happening in the whole country with the occupation forces and the government."

Hussein Ali, a 67-year-old Shiite in Balad, also said he would stay away from the polls. "I will not take part in this game that kills Iraqis," he said.

The sharpening Sunni-Shiite divide is a blow to hopes that the constitution would unite Iraqis and bring stability, allowing the U.S. military to begin pulling out troops. Withdrawals projected for next spring may have to be pushed back.

The constitution "didn't come out as the national compact that we thought it was going to be," the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, told a
Pentagon news conference Friday. "And that caused the situation to change a little bit." He said he still believed some troop reductions were possible in 2006.

Iraqi and U.S. forces were gearing up for more mayhem, increasing the number of checkpoints around Baghdad. Iraqi security forces have intelligence that 33 car bombs are ready and located somewhere in the capital, said Maj. Abdul-Karim al-Mohammedawi, of Iraq's Interior Ministry.

Iraqi troops at a checkpoint Friday captured a woman strapped with explosives under her clothes who was headed for a flea market to carry out a suicide bombing, said army Gen. Jalil Khalaf.

The discovery came after Iraq's first known female suicide bomber killed six people in a northern city on Wednesday, raising fears of a new insurgent strategy aimed at eluding checkpoints, where women often aren't stopped because of Islamic sensitivities over modesty.

In Friday's Hillah attack, a car parked in the market exploded at about 9:30 a.m. as people shopped on their day off before going to weekly Islamic prayers. At least 10 people, including three women and two children, were killed and 41 wounded, said Dr. Mohammed Beirum of Hillah General Hospital.

Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, has seen frequent attacks during Iraq's two-year insurgency — notably a February car bomb that killed 125 people, Iraq's deadliest single bombing.

"Where are the security men? Where are the policemen?" asked a local resident. "What have the women and children done to be killed like this?"

In Balad, officials were still trying to determine the toll from three car bombs that detonated within minutes of each other in an outdoor market and two nearby commercial streets Thursday evening. The death toll rose to 102 after some of the 150 wounded taken to a nearby U.S. military base died. Victims included Sunni Arabs who work in the Balad market.

The Balad attacks hit a region particularly key in the referendum: a string of mainly Shiite towns in Salaheddin, one of four provinces where Sunni Arabs have enough of a majority to potentially get a two-thirds "no" vote. Under election rules, if any three of Iraq's provinces vote "no" by that margin, the constitution is rejected even if a majority across the country accepts it.

The fewer Shiites in the area vote, the more likely Sunnis can reach the two-thirds mark.

Al-Qaida in Iraq issued a claim of responsibility for the Balad attack in a Web statement Friday. The statement, however, said the bombs exploded in the morning and hit Iraqi police and National Guard units. The claim's authenticity could not be verified.

"They have started using these disgusting methods to kill civilians, to scare them from the referendum," said Khalaf, the Iraqi army general.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, remained optimistic, insisting, "I think that the majority of Iraqi people, including some Arab Sunnis, will vote for 'yes' in the referendum."

Moderate Sunni Arab leaders have urged their community to reject the constitution, saying it will fragment Iraq and leave them weak compared to Shiites and Kurds. The political divisions, sharpened by insurgent bloodshed, have raised fears Iraq could be plunged into civil war.

During Friday prayers at a Baghdad's main Sunni mosque, the preacher warned against violence, blaming it on foreign extremists.

"These are hideous acts. They want to destroy your country," Sheik Ahmed Hassan Al-Taha told worshippers at the Abu Hanifaa mosque, urging them to support the Iraqi military. "Those who are tearing Iraqi bodies to pieces are not acting with courage. They want to wreck Iraq."
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This is one of the biggest obstacles to peace in Iraq (indeed, any Arab Nation), the feud between the Sunnis and the Shiites, both of whom strive for supremacy in the Muslim world. Part of the problem with western intervention is that this dichotomy isnt taken into account or isnt given enough importance.

[irishgrl]

link
By Saul Hudson 14 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has postponed punishing Saudi Arabia, its close ally and key oil supplier, for restricting religious freedom -- the first time Washington has waived punishing a blacklisted country under a 1998 law targeting violators of religious rights.

U.S. officials said on Friday the Bush administration had decided to delay imposing sanctions on Saudi Arabia for six months. (surprise surprise)

The decision reflects the delicate balance the United States has sought to strike with Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia as it promotes expanding freedoms at the risk of irking governments needed to support its oil and terrorism policies.

In a rare official rebuke a year ago, Washington designated Saudi Arabia as one of only eight countries worldwide that could be sanctioned. The blacklisting in an annual report said religious freedom did not exist in the kingdom.

With this year's report due out next month, the Bush administration needed to decide on sanctioning Saudi Arabia and chose to give the kingdom a further six months to negotiate how it might improve its record.

"We have not seen strong progress in the area of legal protection for religious freedom," State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper said. "(But) we welcome Saudi recognition of the need to make improvements and create a more tolerant society."

With high oil prices affecting the U.S. economy and dragging on
President George W. Bush's popularity, Democrats have charged he has largely ignored Saudi Arabia's rights record for fear of causing any backlash from the oil supplier.

Prominent Saudis dismiss as politically motivated U.S. criticism of the country's strict Wahhabi brand of Islam.

In contrast to its decision on Saudi Arabia, the United States decided to sanction Eritrea by banning military exports to the Horn of Africa country, the officials said.

Vietnam, the third country added to the blacklist last year, has avoided sanctions after agreeing to improve its record, they added.

The other countries the United States considers serious violators of religious freedom are North Korea, Myanmar, Sudan, Iran and China.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, an agency established by Congress to promote religious freedom, has recommended this year that three allies should be added to the blacklist: Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
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Now, it bears noting that the US, whilst insisting on religious freedom abroad, cant seem to escape the agenda of our own home-grown fundies....

[Brwn_eyes0511]

Well I think we all pretty much assumed there would be some sort of "scare tactics", that really isn't a change.

[irishgrl]

Originally Posted by Brwn_eyes0511

Well I think we all pretty much assumed there would be some sort of "scare tactics", that really isn't a change.

"change"? no. "reality check?" yes. The US needs to acknowledge that there will be no progress in the Middle East until it understands the basic differences between Sunni and Shiite. period. The Muslims have their own internal struggle that has nothing to do with the West. We are easy targets, something various factions trot out from time to time to inflame passions within the two groups. Osama Bin Ladin said most clearly, that the new objective of the Muslim must be to re-establish the old Ottoman Empire boundaries. This is serious. We in the West must be on our guard against this.

[irishgrl]

By Rod Nordland and Christopher Dickey
Newsweek

Jan. 24 issue - When elections are held in Iraq at the end of the month, Iraqis will not see any of the 150,000 American troops stationed there guarding the polling places. Instead, voters will pass groups of armed, masked men wearing black balaclavas to hide their faces. The gunmen may look like terrorists, but they'll be Iraqi Army and police, hiding their identities to protect themselves from retaliation by insurgents, who rarely bother to hide their faces anymore. American officials are hopeful the much-beleaguered Iraqi forces will prove their mettle on Election Day, and preside over an election "by Iraqis and for Iraqis," as an American general puts it. Yet Iraq's rebellious Sunni minority is likely to see it differently: an election for Shiites and Kurds, guarded by Shiites and Kurds, to dominate the Sunnis who once ruled the country
The goal of American military planners has long been to use the new Iraqi military to build national unity. And officially, that hasn't changed. American military officials insist that Iraq's security services are not dominated by non-Sunnis. "Absolutely incorrect," says Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who is in charge of training efforts for the Iraqi forces. "The national forces are national forces, typically Shia, Sunni, Kurds, Yezidi, everything. There is no shortage of recruits from all the difficult areas." That may be true on paper (although no official ethnic breakdown is available). Still, key units and leaders are clearly dominated by Shiites and Kurds, who together represent 75 percent of the population.
Commando 36, for instance, was the first Iraqi National Guard unit into Fallujah when the Marines assaulted the city in November. Shia militia veterans and former Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas dominate the unit. They battled Sunni fighters for the Fallujah hospital, which was being used as an insurgent base. The new Iraqi Army's first full division, the Fourth Infantry, is commanded by a Kurd, Lt. Gen. Abdul Aziz. "The division commander is absolutely committed to an integrated Iraq," says his American counterpart, Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who is based in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. "The American Army was the first institution to integrate America. The Iraqi Army will do the same for Iraq."

But this ideal has proved harder to implement as the insurgency has grown stronger. Ever since mid-2003, when the occupation authority disqualified many officers from Saddam's Sunni-dominated military from rejoining the force, leading Sunnis have been reluctant to sign up. Later the insurgents focused their attacks on the Iraqi police and national guard, deeming them turncoats. When Sunnis have joined the security forces, they've sometimes acted as double agents. Distrust of Sunnis in official positions is now pervasive. "There is no doubt that we are heavily infested in the government, right at the top," says a leading official who has close ties to the Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

The new Iraqi military's first chief of staff was a Sunni—a former general in Saddam's Army. But Gen. Amar Bakir al-Hashimi was fired last summer after insurgents allegedly got key intelligence from one of his staff and used it to assassinate a high-ranking officer. The new chief of staff is a Kurdish general, and the other two highest Iraqi Defense officials are a Shiite and a Kurd. In Mosul, the Sunni police chief, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Kheiri Barhawi, fled the city after his entire force collapsed in the face of insurgent attacks. Later Kurdish troops arrested him carrying $600,000, and accused him of selling out to the insurgents. He was eventually released without charges. "He at one time was a shining example," says an American officer who has worked with Barhawi. "But he was ground down, too long in that job, shot three times, house badly damaged. In retrospect, he should have been transferred somewhere else."

(I just want to say that aside from this issue, I totally support the Kurds.)